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The South African Communist Party received with shock and deepest sorrow the tragic news of the death of Fezeka Loliwe, the Party’s Central Committee Member and an African National Congress Member of Parliament. Comrade Fezeka Loliwe died after a motor vehicle accident late afternoon on Monday, 5 March on her way from her Parliamentary Constituency in Fort Beaufort in the Amatole District Municipality to East London in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality.

The SACP conveys its heartfelt condolences to the Loliwe family, the ANC, our Alliance, Parliament and country as a whole. 

Comrade Fezeka Loliwe, 53, was born on 17 August 1964 in Frankfort, King Williamstown in the Eastern Cape in a working class family. She was first elected to the SACP Central Committee by the Party’s 13th Congress held in July 2012. At the time of her death she was serving her second term as a Member of the SACP Central Committee following her re-election by the Party’s 14th Congress held in July 2017. Before her first election to the SACP Central Committee she served as the Party’s Eastern Cape Provincial Executive Committee Member and from 2011 as its Provincial Working Committee Member.

Comrade Fezeka Loliwe was elected to Parliament as an ANC MP in 2014. She served as a Member of Parliament’s Labour Portfolio Committee, a Whip in the Committee and later its Chairperson. She served in the SABC Parliamentary Inquiry Ad Hoc Committee. She performed her duties diligently. 

Comrade Fezeka Loliwe’s involvement in the struggle for liberation and social emancipation dates back to her student activism in King Williams Town at the Lennox Sebe Teachers College, later renamed Griffiths Mxenge College of Education. She was expelled in 1986 in reaction to her political activism against apartheid. She completed her teaching qualification at Dr WB Rubusana College of Education in Mdantsane, East London in 1988.

In the early 1990s she was active in civic mobilisation and in the Frankfort Youth Organisation.
Comrade Fezeka Loliwe’s leadership role in the ANC as in the SACP and the labour movement was a product of an organic process of activism from the grassroots. She served as the Branch Secretary of the ANC in King Williamstown. At the time of her death she was serving as the Member of its Regional Executive Committee in Dr W.B Rubusana Region covering the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality.

When she became an educator she joined the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), where she was later elected to serve as the union’s site steward and Branch Deputy Secretary respectively. She rose through the ranks of Sadtu to become its Eastern Cape Provincial Deputy Secretary, Acting Provincial Secretary and Provincial Secretary, and Vice President for Sports, Arts and Culture successively.

Comrade Fezeka Loliwe is survived by her two sisters and her brother.

The SACP lowers its flag from the summit to half-mast in memory of the stalwart of our national democratic revolution and the struggle for socialism. In memory of Comrade Fezeka Loliwe, a labour movement and gender transformation activist, the SACP will deepen its programme on both fronts against labour exploitation and patriarchal domination towards complete liberation and social emancipation.

The SACP will publicly announce memorial and funeral service details in consultation with the family as well as with Parliament.

Issued by SACP